3 reasons you need to try a juice cleanse

With the new year on the horizon, here’s 3 reasons you need to try a juice cleanse.

There’s no denying that juicing and blending have been incredibly popular this year. With nutri machines and juicers flying off the shelves and pre-packaged, bottled cleanses proving increasingly attractive for those of us with busy lives, it seems the art of extracting liquid nutrients from fruit and veg could well be the go-to detox for January 2016.

I’m a huge fan of juicing. Two years ago it kick-started my weight-loss, I’m 65lbs down. That’s five stone of fat gone! My teeth are whiter than they’ve ever been and my dentist was astounded when my bleeding gums simply stopped bleeding. ‘What have you changed?’ she asked. It wasn’t my toothpaste or a sudden urge to floss six times a day. The change was juicing.

Far from being the latest fad or trendy weight loss option, juicing has been with us since the late sixties. In 1968, a lady called Ann Wigmore co-founded the Hippocrates Health Institute. Ann Wigmore was an early pioneer in the use of wheatgrass juice for detoxifying the body. If juicing is a fad, it’s an impressive 47-year one!

Juicing green vegetables is the perfect way for those of us adverse to eating platefuls of broccoli and spinach to ingest a huge quantity of super green nutrients! Removal of the pulp, the insoluble fibre, ensures those nutrients are going to hit the cells straight away, without asking anything of the major organs in terms of digestion. When you understand the concept of juicing, the principle of consuming an enormous quantity of liquid green vegetables to heal the body simply makes sense. I’m fortunate, juicing changed my tastebuds. I no longer crave sugary junk and soda drinks. I can genuinely say I love my fresh fruit and veg – raw, steamed, juiced, or blended. But for a nation addicted to sugar and processed junk, a plate of steamed broccoli just doesn’t cut it. Fast food is pushed on us everywhere we go, the sugar cravings are consistently being fed. I’m not talking about naturally occurring fruit sugars, I’m talking about dextrose, maltodextrin, high-fructose corn syrup, caramel and the other numerous titles that cleverly disguise what is essentially pure, added sugar, hidden in so many of the foods we consume. Surely replacing that sugar-laden breakfast cereal with a super green juice containing broccoli, spinach, apple, cucumber and ginger in 2016 can only be a good thing? So here are three reasons to try a juice cleanse…

Mental clarity

The most wonderful feeling I get from juicing is definitely a mental one. I liken it to unwittingly living in a fog for years. Suddenly the mist lifts and you’re able to think better, feel better, react faster. That foggy, lethargic feeling drains away and all of a sudden you feel mentally focused and physically motivated.

Weight loss

In total, I lost five stone over two years. The first couple of stone fell off quickly. Juicing feeds your body all the vitamins and nutrients it needs at a cellular level. The feeling of energy you get from literally pouring all that nutrition into your body is amazing. You actually feel as though you want to move. Juicing changed my tastebuds to crave healthy food and gave me the energy I needed to begin exercising.

Clearer skin

The most dramatic, life-changing benefit of juicing for me, is without doubt the complete remission of my psoriasis. I’m not alone, I only need to flip through the pictures and messages from juicers who tweet and email me, excited at seeing a complete change in their skin and health as a result of being inspired to extract the liquid nutrients from fresh fruit and veg. Juicing for them has offered something pharmaceutical medicine has to date proved incapable of doing. There is no medical cure for psoriasis.

It sounds kooky, but a little green juice genuinely changed my life. Those super-green, super-alkalising nutrients, extracted from fresh fruits and vegetables began to heal my body from the inside out. Within 30 days I was able to go out in short sleeves without worrying about red, scaly patches all over my skin. Within 60 days even the scars were faint. Juicing, and the awesome health benefits I reaped from it, became addictive. Give it a try in 2016. Perhaps it will do the same for you.